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The journey is always the same, and never the same. As Ian Bostridge remarks, at the end of his prize-winning book Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession, when the wanderer asks Der Leiermann, “Will you play your hurdy-gurdy to my songs?”, in the final song of Winterreise, the ‘crazy but logical procedure would be to go right back to the beginning of the whole cycle and start all over again’.

It felt rather decadent to be sitting in an opera house at 12pm. Even more so given the passion-fuelled excesses of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, which might seem rather too sensual and savage for mid-day consumption.

Manitoba Opera opened its 45th season with Puccini’s Madama Butterfly proving that the aching heart as expressed through art knows no racial or cultural divide, with the Italian composer’s self-avowed favourite opera still able to spread its poetic wings across time and space since its Milan premiere in 1904.

In 1992, concert promoter Heinz Liebrecht introduced pianist Julius Drake to tenor Ian Bostridge and an acclaimed, inspiring musical partnership was born. On Wenlock Edge formed part of their first programme, at Holkham Hall in Norfolk; and, so, in this recital at Middle Temple Hall, celebrating their 25 years of music-making, the duo included Vaughan Williams’ Housman settings for tenor, piano and string quartet alongside works with a seventeenth-century origin or flavour.

Not many (maybe any) of the new operas presented by San Francisco Opera over the past 10 years would lure me to the War Memorial Opera House a second time around. But for Girls of the Golden West just now I would be there again tomorrow night and the next, and I am eagerly awaiting all future productions.

It’s taken a while for Rossini’s Semiramide to reach the Covent Garden stage. The last of the operas which Rossini composed for Italian theatres between 1810-1823, Semiramide has had only one outing at the Royal Opera House since 1887, and that was a concert version in 1986.

‘His master’s masterpiece, the work of heaven’: ‘a common fountain’ from which flow ‘pure silver drops’. At the risk of effulgent hyperbole, I’d suggest that Antonio’s image of the blessed governance and purifying power of the French court - in the opening scene of Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi - is also a perfect metaphor for the voice of French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, as it slips through Handel’s roulades like a silken ribbon.

Here are five complete song sets by two of the greatest masters of French song. The performers are highly competent. I should have known, given the rave reviews that their 2015 recording of modern Norwegian songs received.

The opera world barely knows how to handle works that have significant amounts of spoken dialogue. Conductors and stage directors will often trim the dialogue to a bare minimum (Magic Flute), have it rendered as sung recitative (Carmen), or have it spoken in the vernacular though the sung numbers may often be performed in the original language (Die Fledermaus).

Here is the latest CD from a major label promoting a major new soprano. Aida Garifullina is utterly remarkable: a lyric soprano who also can handle coloratura with ease. Her tone has a constant shimmer, with a touch of quick, narrow vibrato even on short notes.

From the start of Lyric Opera of Chicago’s splendid, new production of Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre conflict and resolution are portrayed throughout with moving intensity. The central character Brünnhilde is sung by Christine Goerke and her father Wotan by Eric Owens.

Compared to the oft-explored world of German lieder and French chansons, the songs of Russia are unfairly neglected in recordings and in the concert hall. The raw emotion and expansive lyricism present in much of this repertoire was clearly in evidence at the Holywell Music Room for the penultimate day of the celebrated Oxford Lieder Festival.

This concert was an event on several levels - marking a decade since the death of Stockhausen, the fortieth anniversary (almost to the day) since Singcircle first performed STIMMUNG (at the Round House), and their final public performance of the piece. It was also a rare opportunity to hear (and see) Stockhausen’s last completed purely electronic work, COSMIC PULSES - an overwhelming visual and aural experience that anyone who was at this concert will long remember.

Bampton Classical Opera is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2017 Young Singers’ Competition is mezzo-soprano Emma Stannard and the runner-up is tenor Wagner Moreira. The winner of the accompanists’ prize, a new category this year, is Keval Shah.

With this recording of Mozart’s 1771 opera, Il sogno di Scipione (Sicpio’s Dream), Classical Opera continue their progress through the adolescent composer’s precocious achievements and take another step towards the fulfilment of their complete Mozart opera series for Signum Classics.

Full-scale power over a huge orchestra is demanded of them, and the parts are
often given, like Valkyries or Rhinemaidens, to budding dramatic sopranos. That
being understood and the brevity of the parts being acknowledged, still, it is
not a good sign when three or four of the maids have louder, more focused, more
credibly heroic voices than either Elektra or Chrysothemis. But such was the
case at the Met on December 15.

The Elektra was Susan Bullock, who was unable to bring the requisite force
to this endurance contest of a part. We must be grateful to any soprano who can
simply get through it, but any pressure seemed to push her vibrato wide open,
and the whole performance was thin and squally, never vocally overwhelming and
uninformed by any vision of Elektra’s personality. Her acting, too, was
graceless, which may suit the bedraggled nature of a princess in the mire, but
Bullock spent most of the evening staring at the conductor or waving an axe
about the stage, and she made little of the dancing, a tricky bit for any
Elektra.

Deborah Voigt, in distressing vocal estate, sang Chrysothemis, and never
have the two sisters seemed so well-matched, so related: neither of them could
bring full force to her music, and they bickered like kittens when the matter
under discussion is how they are to murder their mother. Not until the
triumphant final scene did Voigt give forth a few of the radiant notes that
were once a feature of her Strauss singing. Perhaps it’s just as well the
Met shelved the originally scheduled revival of Die Frau ohne
Schatten, once a Voigt signature.

Felicity Palmer as Klytemnestra

The appearance of Felicity Palmer as Klytemnestra came as a great relief.
Palmer cannot manage hurricane force either, but she had something more: a
highly focused conception of the character. Her voice seemed dull, drably
colored, as if by the bad dreams and lack of sleep she sings about, and then
color crept in as Elektra goaded her with false hopes and conundrums. Gaunt and
frail but vigorously flailing her staff, she made a striking figure, terrifying
for the example of her fate.

Evgeny Nikitin’s bass-baritone possesses the size and dignity for
Orest, but his singing was grainy rather than ominous on this occasion.
Wolfgang Schmidt sang an unusually sturdy Aegisth — the role is usually a
caricature — and John Easterlin was impressive in the small role of the
arrogant servant sent to fetch him.

The tilted Otto Schenk production grows on one with time — its
unnerving angles intentionally set the teeth on edge as we meet this most
famously dysfunctional of families. I liked David Kneuss’s direction, but
I’d like it better if the singers sang to each other now and then, if
Elektra didn’t wave her axe like a cheerleader, and if the Overseer did
not crack her whip only to have the Serving Maids pay no attention. Surely they
would shut up when the whip cracked, if indeed the Overseer were the fearsome
creature intended? In which case, the whip cracks should be timed for those few
moments in their scene when the maids are about to shut up.

The hero of the night was Fabio Luisi in the pit, a masterful Strauss
conductor who spared us nothing of the brutality of this devastating score but
at the same time was always careful never to contest the air with his singers,
holding the turbulence down so that vocal lines were clear. Underpowered some
of them might be, drowned out never. Such courtesy and skill have not always
been featured by conductors of Elektra.